Plasmodium and the Transmission of Malaria

Plasmodium is transmitted from person to person by female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, which pierce the skin with their sharp, tubular mouthparts and feed on the blood which they suck from the superficial skin capillaries.
If the blood so taken contains the malarial parasites, these undergo a complicated series of changes within the mosquito, including extensive reproduction, and eventually accumulate in large numbers in the salivary glands. If this mosquito now bites a healthy person, saliva containing hundreds of parasites is injected into his or her blood stream